Cardiac rhythm management devices are implantable devices that provide electrical stimulation to selected chambers of the heart in order to treat disorders of cardiac rhythm. Such devices include pacemakers and implantable cardioverter/defibrillators as well as devices with both types of functionality. Cardiac rhythm management devices have the capability of sensing the intrinsic activity of the heart in order to both deliver certain types of pacing and to detect pathological conditions. Certain devices also have sensors for sensing other physiological variables such as respiratory rate and stroke volume. These devices also have sufficient processing power to perform sophisticated analysis of the data collected by its sensors for the purpose of predicting the occurrence of pathological events, such as an arrhythmia. If such an event is predicted to occur, the device can deliver appropriate therapy and/or alert the patient or clinical personnel. Because implantable devices have limited processing power and are powered by a battery, replacement of which requires re-implantation, it is not practical for a device to continuously perform computation intensive data analysis. It would be useful, therefore, if the device could identify situations where such data analysis would be warranted.